


a slow shattering

by TheBookDinosaur



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: HPFT, PTSD, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Post-Second War with Voldemort, Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 04:25:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6500716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBookDinosaur/pseuds/TheBookDinosaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Battle of Hogwarts, Lavender Brown is taken to a White room. Slowly, she falls to pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. mirror thrown to the ground

**Author's Note:**

> this deals w pretty heavy trauma and PTSD; if you think you might be triggered by that, feel free to hit the back button, or please proceed with caution.

All around her is horror horror horror because it can’t be real and Parvati Patil, her best friend, didn’t just get her limbs knocked off with a careless spell from a masked Death Eater, her body isn’t toppling to the ground where are her arms and legs they’re not on her body and she is quite sure that bodies are supposed to have limbs but Parvati’s doesn’t so where are they? Where?

She is so busy watching in dull horror the body of her best friend on the ground with blood surrounding it, the red circle growing, that she doesn’t notice the werewolf racing over to her until it’s too late.

And then she’s screaming as the heavy, stinking body of someone pins her to the ground. Then all she feels is pain. She doesn’t even notice that her throat is burning from her screams. She doesn’t notice the hard, cold stone floor digging into her back. Her world narrows, shrinks, until it’s only her and the blinding pain swirling around her face, the blood – there was blood, there was blood, where the hell did blood come from? – that’s slithering down her face, snakelike, running into her mouth and nose and ears and eyes and choking her. She can taste the metal in it, and somehow it tastes of desperation too as she tries to get it out because she needs to breathe and wants to see but oh god there was so much pain she can’t take it she can’t can’t can’t –

And then the crushing weight is off her with a bang and a shriek of “No!” coming from somewhere off to her right. She slumps to the ground, and knows no more.

* * *

There is a vague sensation of being lifted forcefully, voices surrounding her, concerned and worried and the pain as vivid as ever now, spreading from her face to her hairline and down to her neck like fire. She mumbles and tries to lift a hand to press to her face.

Blurrily, she can make out two doctors hovering above her, bright white. Firmly, they press her hand down again, mumbling things she can’t make out. Then they take her wand out of her stiff fingers before injecting her, the needle reaching into her upper arm through skin and flesh and it feels cold, a pinprick in her arm, and the pain dulls to a slow throb in time with her heartbeat. _Boom. Boom. Boom._

They move her with magic towards a destination she has no idea of and has no say in anything at all.

* * *

The next time she wakes up, the first thing she notices is the pain in her face. The second thing she notices is white. She’s on a white bed with white sheets in a room with white walls and a white door, and everything is so clean and white in the room except her, she’s in pain and dirty and grimy and her face feels so inflamed that she’s convinced that it’s bright red, so obviously she doesn’t belong here, does she?

When she looks down, her arms are shackled to the sides of the bed, and she can’t move them. There are red scratch marks on her arm, fingernail cuts but who would have done that she didn’t obviously she couldn’t because her arms are shackled and she can’t move her arms why can’t she move her arms she needs to be able to move her arms or how can she know they’re still attached to her body because Parvati’s weren’t and she needs her arms she needs to move her arms – 

It’s only when more doctors appear and inject her with something that she realises she’s screaming and thrashing because why don’t they understand she needs to move her arms?

Then, nothing.

* * *

The room remains stubbornly white white white, and blinding, and she still can’t move her arms. The next time a doctor comes in, he smiles at her. “Hello,” he says gently. She doesn’t speak. He comes over to sit next to her bed. “I’m Dave.”

She doesn’t speak, and he begins to frown.

“Do you know your name?”

She doesn’t speak. Does she know her name? No. Yes. No. She is Lavender Brown. She was Lavender Brown. Lavender Brown died when the werewolf began to scratch her, and now she doesn’t know who she is.

“Can you talk?”

No. Yes. She doesn’t think she can; she doesn’t want to. And so her mouth remains firmly closed.

The doctor stays for a while, then sighs and leaves the room.

* * *

In the early morning, two more doctors come in the room. She keeps her eyes closed and her body motionless, breathing steadily because she doesn’t want to face the world and its questions.

They take her pulse and put their hands on her forehead before conversing in hushed voices.

“Dave came in yesterday. He says she won’t respond to anything. That and the screaming and the nightmares has her classified tentatively as insane.”

“Sounds a bit harsh.”

“Well, the werewolf attack was pretty traumatic, so he thinks that might have tipped her over the edge.”

“All vitals stable,” the other doctor says, and they leave the room.

She rolls over to stare at the (white) ceiling, the breath in her lungs trembling.

Insane. She’s insane. She’s crazy. Is she crazy? Does she have nightmares? She’s crazy.

She’s

Crazy.

* * *

The alarming thing that she notices about craziness is how easily people accept it, and how they treat her when they’ve established that she’s crazy.

Before she was referred to as ‘Brown’ or ‘Lavender’ or sometimes even ‘Lavvie’. Now she’s the crazy girl. Just the crazy girl. It’s her complete personality, her occupation and her name all rolled into one.

It’s astonishing to her, how much influence that word has over her life. Five letters, which make up one word, changes her life completely. Anything she tries to say, any screams or odd things she does are immediately credited to her craziness. Even the small things she had before the craziness, her habit of loud sobbing, her habit of fidgeting and her likeness for things in groups of three are quickly waved away as her being crazy.

And then she is left lying in bed, trying to remember whether those habits were there before or whether they’ve just appeared now and leaving her crazy. Or have they been there all along, and so did that mean she’d always been crazy?

Once, two doctors stand next to her bed, discussing whether she seemed to like the lentils or the peas better yesterday, and which one to feed her today, and she is curled up next to them trying to understand why one of them won’t turn and just ask her, because wouldn’t she know? Isn’t she the leading authority on herself?

She likes the pea soup better, but when she tries to tell them the words stick in her throat and she can’t try any harder than she already is to get them out and so she slumps down on her (white) hospital bed.

An hour later, they give her the lentils, free her hands and stay to make sure she eats at least half of the dish. Then they cuff her hands again and leave.

* * *

Slowly, she begins to understand her situation. It is easiest to sum up in a small list, which eventually takes a place in her mind as Things Crazy People Are Allowed to Do:  
-Scream  
-Cry  
-Become hysterical for reasons completely unclear to the doctors around you  
-Withdraw into oneself  
-Not respond to anything for extended periods of time.

And here are things Crazy People Are Not Allowed to Do:  
-Think  
-Have an opinion  
-Be taken seriously

Her life is divided into two parts, Before the werewolf attack and After the werewolf attack, and she wishes with all her heart that she could just go back to Before.

* * *

Sometimes, she thinks about it, but most of the time she wishes she was completely crazy instead of this half-madness she’s lingering in. Because she’s sane enough to think and to feel pain and to know that she should have been with Parvati but apparently not sane enough to decide whether she likes lentils or pea soup better, or to be trusted with her own hands which are still shackled to the bed. 

So she avoids thinking, because thinking means that Parvati’s body will appear again and again in her mind from triggers she didn’t even know existed, red and white and pulsing and awful.

Once, a doctor comes into the room eating a doughnut. When he bites into the centre red jam comes oozing out and then she’s screaming screaming screaming because with a snap her mind is back on the ground of Hogwarts as Fenrir Greyback slowly scratches her face but this time it’s not blood that comes out of her cuts, it’s red jam which trickles down her face, exactly the same colour as her blood but not the salty metal she remembers, it gets into her mouth and nose and it’s sickly sweet and it’s choking her slowly –

They inject her with something again. She is amassing a small army of scars on her upper arm and neck from the number of times they’ve stuck a needle through her skin, surgical and precise and silver and so completely invasive that it still feels wrong after so much experience.

* * *

For a long time, she is alone in her ward. She can remember a time when her mother went around in tears and her father in soft whispers, because her grandmother had been placed in an Old Folk’s Home against her will and then refused food and water until she died. The house was silent then, even footsteps muffled.

She thinks that she doesn’t have the mental fortitude to ever give up her food and water, growing weaker and knowing that salvation could be found in a single word. She doesn’t want to die like this, either; she wants someone to grieve for her. (But Parvati was dead, remember? Her body was a pool of red with white flashing through and limbs strewn carelessly about her still torso and it was the worst sight she had ever seen –)

* * *

Hearing that mass funeral ceremonies are being arranged for those who died in the Battle of Hogwarts breathes life into her. Just hearing about the awful event makes her face throb more, and then she remembers that she’s been scarred and wonders whether she wants to see herself in the mirror.

Why do they call it the Battle of Hogwarts? That makes it sound noble. It makes it sound like a battle in one of the fairytales she loved so dearly as a child, made up and told to her by her mother. It was the opposite of noble, it was messy and bloody and shouty and loud with curses flying everywhere, her own included and she had no idea what was going on, just blindly shooting spells until her vision locked onto Parvati in time to see –

The next time a doctor comes into the room, she tries to express this to him.

“It wasn’t noble,” she says, her voice cracked and dry like a leaf left out in the sun. The doctor’s eyebrows raise so high, his face is such a perfect mask of surprise, that in another life, or Before, Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil might have giggled about it behind their hands.

“What wasn’t?” he asks. The almost-fear in his voice takes her by surprise before she remembers.

She’s crazy.

“The Battle,” she says after a long pause. “It wasn’t.”

“Wasn’t...noble?” the doctor asks. She shakes her head.

“They treat it like it is. They name it like it is.” The doctor obviously had no words for this, so Lavender continues. “I was there. It’s not.”

“Uh, well...” There’s a pause as the doctor struggles to adjust to the patient having an actual _conversation_ with him and she stares at her hands. “Maybe they don’t want to remember it for what it was,” is the best he can come up with.

“They shouldn’t remember it for what it wasn’t,” she says. There is another awkward pause. “I want to go.”

“I – what – pardon?” the doctor asks, flummoxed at this latest twist in the conversation.

“To the funerals.” She raises her gaze from her hands, limp and still and much too pale, to look at the doctor who has been coming in to visit her almost daily for however long she’s been in the White Room. “The nurses were talking about it. I want to go.”

“Look, Lavender,” the doctor pauses when she shows no response, and then she remembers that her name is Lavender and looks up at him. “Look,” he continues, “I don’t think that would be the best thing for you.”

“It would,” she says, because she’s her and she knows herself better than a man who sits next to her sometimes and is only having his first proper conversation with her now.

“And why do you think that?” he asks her, looking at her with a calculating look in his eyes and sitting down. She knows enough from her teachers and her schoolmates to know what that look means; he’s judging her.

“Because,” she falters. “Because she was my friend.”

“Who was?” the doctor asked with a mask of patience over an irritated mind, as though she couldn’t see through him.

“She was. Parvati Patil was. She still is, but she’s not here to prove it.”

“Do you want to see her?” the doctor asked. This time it’s her turn to look at him blankly.

“She’s dead. I saw her die.” The doctor at least has the grace to colour himself red.

“Do you want to see her buried?”

“Yes,” she says, ignoring the red and looking down at the white but that’s just as bad because white was the colour of her best friend’s bones in the instant before they were covered in the blood from her overeager heart. So she looks at her pale, thin hands which aren’t white but the colour of unhealthy skin.

The doctor stays for a while, and then leaves.

* * *

The nurses talk in front of her as though she’s not sane enough to understand what they’re saying, like she’s completely out of it, like being attacked has made her stupid.

That’s how she hears that she’s been classified as mentally fragile but not insane because Dave had a conversation with her which didn’t involve screaming or unresponsiveness. And that’s how she learns that he doesn’t want to send her to the funeral.

“Why not?” she demands when he comes in the day after she hears this.

“Why what?” he asks, sitting down.

“Why can’t I go?”

“Go where?” he asks, and she feels a surge of anger because he’s playing dumb, isn’t he? Why? Why can’t she go, why is he playing dumb, why does her face ache so much? Why why why?

“The funerals,” she hisses. Could she escape? Where was her wand? How could she escape without her wand? Where is her wand? How could she escape with her hands shackled to her bed?

“Lavender, you’ve been doing so well the past few days, and I think that seeing those people you knew and loved might have undesirable consequences to your mental health.”

“So I can’t go,” she says flatly.

“No,” he replies.

“I want to go,” is all she says to him. “I want to see them before I can’t.” He sighs, but she sees something calculative in his eyes.

“Well, we think that you might be able to go if,” he starts, and who’s this we he’s talking about? He’s the only one who makes decisions concerning her as far as she knows and why is he trying to pretend to be nice to her? And why is he trying to spread the blame so she won’t accuse him? “If you improve more. If you prove to us that your mind can bear going to the funeral –”

“But it can,” she says flatly. “I know. I’m me.” Because why isn’t she acknowledged as the leading authority on herself?

“Look, we just –” he gesticulates vaguely with his hands before marching out of the room. Lavender pulls at the restraints on her own arms had enough to draw blood but not hard enough to get out of them.

He comes back in with something shiny in his hands, handing it to her as she looks at him, puzzled. He gestures for her to look down into her reflection, so she does.

And

She

Sees.

She sees the claw marks on her face, exactly as though a wild animal had attacked her and yet not like that because they are somehow so _methodical_. She sees how the swirl around her face, missing her most important features and leaving a grotesque mask in place of the skin on her face. But it’s okay, isn’t it? It’s not real. Not there. Not true. And if it’s not real, there’s nothing to worry about.

“Thank you for showing this to me,” she says calmly. When the doctor looks surprised, his face a mask to mirror her own, she thinks he might move away.

He doesn’t.

“Thank you,” she repeats. “Thank you.” And then as he stubbornly remains in the white chair wearing his white suit she can feel the calmness leaking from her body because _this_ was what the werewolf was doing, wasn’t it? He was making her hurt and scratching her and scarring her and excluding her so that she’d never be a part of society again oh god oh god oh god it’s real why her no it’s not yes it is _why her_ , and her breathing comes quickly as she stares at something the colour of unhealthy skin, so unlike her best friend’s skin.

“Lavender –” the doctor starts, but he’s drowned out by her because she’s started to scream scream scream.

“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” she shrieks, over and over and over, the high sounds piercing the air and bouncing around the room, making the doctor flinch. She throws the mirror down, letting it smash so that perhaps there might be something else in the room as broken as she is. Isn’t this every girl’s worst nightmare? So she screams for the pain, for the scars, for the death of her best friend.

There is another needle stuck into her arm and her wrists are shackled to the bed before the doctor leaves the room, levitating the shards of glass with him.

She screams as long as she can, torn apart inside by the image of her own face, red and scarred and ruined. And when the suffocating blackness comes over her from the needle, she sleeps.

* * *

The next time she wakes up, her wrists are bloody from chafing, the red seeping into the white sheets and reminding her so much of the Battle, which reminds her of the funerals which are next week, which reminds her that she still hasn’t been allowed to go because of her face.

Nobody comes in that day as she stares at the ceiling blankly, trying to reconcile the face she saw yesterday to her own.

She thinks that when she knows truly that Lavender Brown died the moment the werewolf pinned her to the ground.

Is it a shallow thing, to worry of the scars on her face? Yes. Yes, it is. She’s always been a little shallow perhaps, pressing flowers and sobbing over the easiest thing. _You’ll have to get tougher_ , her mother’s voice whispers. _You can’t stay a child forever, Lavvie_.

 _Where are you, Mum?_ It’s the first time she’s thought of her mum since she started staying in the white room, and that realisation sends a pang of guilt through her. _Dad, too. Are you dead?_

“Mum?” she whispers at the ceiling, hot tears burning her eyes and sliding down the sides of her face into her hair. Her voice sounds more fragile than she’s ever heard it before. “Don’t you want to visit me? My face is horrible, and I’m the colour of unhealthy skin. Don’t you want to see? Where are you?” Her question echoes around and around her mind like a sick mantra.

_Where are you? Where are you? Where?_


	2. a ceiling on her soul

Did you know that some things can erase your existence completely? Did you know that when your existence is erased and you’re known only as The Crazy Girl, everyone decides that it’s best for you if they make your decisions? Did you know that when you’ve become The Crazy Girl, you’re no longer Lavender Brown, because the two are mutually exclusive? Did you know that you’re not trusted with your own hands because you lose control so often?

You should.

Because her family is gone and her best friend is gone and there are doctors who come into her room and inject her against her will, because there are scars on her face that will never ever go away, because all the doctors crowd into her room on the night of the full moon to observe the absolute nothing that happens, because she feels like throwing up when their eyes are on her, watching her with a curiosity that feels detached and invasive and wrong.

Because she has dreams every night, of a friend who laughs with her and kisses her on the cheek as they lie on her bed together confessing secrets and exchanging gossip, because when she wakes up every morning it’s like being hit by a train all over again. Because she misses her friend more than she ever thought she ever could.

* * *

Once upon a time, there was a girl called Lavender. She was an only child, and deeply beloved of her parents, who never wanted to let her go; Lavender, brought up to value her family and keep to herself, was perfectly fine with this. And then, when she was eleven, a wizard came to see her and told her that she was a witch, that she would be attending a school for Magic.

She went to the school, and met a dark-skinned girl called Parvati who spoke in an accent that made everything sound musical, and Lavender had to share a dormitory with her. But that was okay; Lavender’s heart was a cupboard, and only her parents could fill that space.

But somehow, the girl with a voice like music grew close to Lavender as they took lessons together and laughed about the same things and exchanged late-night secrets. Somehow, Lavender found herself making another room in her heart, and this room belonged to Parvati, only Parvati, and both of them were happy. She started to make a room for Ronald in her Sixth Year, but it wasn’t properly constructed and fell down, and somehow she thinks that was probably for the best, because the majority of her heart belonged to her best friend and wasn’t that how it should’ve been? Wasn’t it?

And then – what happened?

And then the girl with a laugh like honey and a smile like the sun was killed with a careless spell that probably wasn’t even meant for her, and Lavender’s world felt like it was falling apart; and then her parents were killed but nobody would tell Lavender how; and then, somehow, Lavender ended up in a hospital, in a white room in a white bed covered in white sheets where she doesn’t belong. Somehow, she has scars on her face and bruises on her soul, and her heart is in a million pieces and she doesn’t think she can ever put them together again.

And now her heart is empty of people to love, because her mum is gone and her dad is gone and worst, worst, worst of all, Parvati is gone, and the room that’s been filled for so long feels as though it’s going to fall down without Parvati’s love to keep it upright.

Did you know that the truth is stranger than fiction?

* * *

Did you know that they won’t let her go to the funeral of her best friend? Did you know that she asks too many questions?

Of course you do.

They hold funerals and she’s not allowed to go, and she feels like the pieces of her heart are lying somewhere around her feet, strewn there carelessly while her heart disobediently keeps beating.

Did you know that her cupboard is empty? Achingly empty. She misses her best friend so much that her heart hurts with the strain of it.

And still, it keeps on beating. Every second of every minute of every hour of every day is punctuated with the _boom_ of her heart as it thumps in her chest, again and again and again and again. Sometimes she gets sick of the noise, and sometimes she’s grateful for it because it provides her with something to listen to in her white room.

She thinks that she must have done something wonderful in a past life to deserve a heart that beats so strongly; to deserve a heart that’s so determined to keep her alive.

* * *

“How are you feeling today, Lavender?” the doctor asks her, leaning back in his chair. Sometimes she has the willpower to send him a sarcastic look or a shrug, but most days she just stares at the (white) ceiling. Today is one of those days. She thinks that St Mungo’s must have spells to keep everything so clean because she hasn’t seen anyone cleaning her room or the corridor outside, but they’re both spotless.

“You know,” Dave says, letting his chair hit the floor again with a _thump_ that almost coincides with her heartbeat. Everything is measured by her heartbeat. No, Lavender doesn’t know and she doesn’t particularly want to. Dave doesn’t say anything more, and it appears as though he doesn’t know either.

How did she ever become a Gryffindor?

* * *

He tells her that people cried at Parvati’s funeral. He tells her that there were almost sixty people there, as the coffins were all laid out separately and the crowd moved from one to another so that they could bury everyone on the same day, and also so that all the funerals could be over and done with quickly and easily: like ripping off a band-aid. But it’s never going to be over, doesn’t he know that? It’s never ever going to over, because the pain at the sheer emptiness of the room in her heart will never fade.

He tells her about the funerals and about the grief that other people are going through, too, and it’s clear that he’s hoping she’ll feel better, but she gives him a flat stare and lets the words hang between them: _you didn’t let me go. you should have let me go._

Because what right do people have to cry at Parvati’s funeral? Who else knows that she hated the colour orange but loved watching sunrises and sunsets? Who knew that she wore her grandmother’s bracelet on her wrist all the time even though jewellery is against the school rules, simply because it was a gift? Who else knew that she had a laugh like dark honey and a smile like the sun? Who else slept in a bed with her, and confessed their deepest darkest secrets to her?

Who has a room in their heart just for Parvati? A room that’s threatening to collapse because the sheer weight of grief at her death is too much?

Can anyone know how much she cares for Parvati? Can anyone comprehend the earth-shattering love that they held together? Can anyone else ever even try to understand the enormity of her love, and the enormity of her loss? Someone once said that it was like being in love, discovering your best friend, and it’s so true that it makes her want to weep. But how can you deal with all the love if your best friend is gone? How can you manage all the love you’re holding for a person who can’t receive it?

She falls into a pattern, and it goes like this:

Breathe.

Eat.

Sleep.

Repeat.

* * *

They all speak to her s l o w l y and c a r e f u l l y, because they don’t think she can understand her even though she _can_ , because she the Crazy Girl, isn’t she? Nothing more and nothing less. Just Crazy.

They ask themselves whether she likes salt soup or vegetable soup better, when she’s right there, she’s right in front of them, and so tired, too tired to try and open her mouth, knowing that whatever she’ll say will be dismissed as Crazy talk immediately.

She’s so tired of being the Crazy Girl. Sometimes she dreams of moving away, running away, travelling far away, but then she remembers that her face is scarred and people will recognise her everywhere and there’s no escape from being the Crazy Girl, and she lets the warm tears trace paths down her face and into the pillow. Her body leaks tears and sweat and blood, and they call her Crazy. But that makes sense, doesn’t it? She _is_ Crazy.

Some days she doesn’t want to accept their label. She’s not not _not_ crazy. But then she has to face the facts: she’s locked up in a hospital and her mind is absent more often than not and she’s not even trusted with the use of her hands and yeah, she’s Crazy.

* * *

She won’t let the room collapse, you know.

She’ll keep the room in her heart, and nobody will fill it and the empty space will ache but Parvati will _always_ have a room in Lavender’s heart. At first, at the very beginning, there was Parvati and there was Lavender. Somehow, very soon after that, it became Parvati and Lavender. And then as Lavender built the room in her heart of Parvati, it changed into ParvatiandLavender, crammed together so tightly that neither knows where one ends and the other begins.

She’ll never let the room collapse. Never, never, never. Not ever.

* * *

One day, the doctor unlocks the shackles and tells her to get up, and waits, pretending to be patient, as she finds the use of her legs again, gripping at the side of the bed until she feels like maybe she can trust her legs to move.

“Follow me, please,” he says. “Since you’ve more control over yourself, I’m going to start taking you to therapy. Okay?” It’s not like he cares whether it’s okay for her or not though, because he turns his back on her and leads the way down the corridor that’s just as white as her room is, and equally depressing. She’s just another duty for him to tick off his list of duties for the day, isn’t she?

The walls have no posters on them; the doors are as white as the walls, except that they have nametags in black lettering on the door, which is better than nothing. Black and white; polar opposites. She’s not sure why she finds that so fascinating.

He makes her walk ahead of him, giving her directions in a measured, careful voice every time they come across a choice of which way to go, so that he can keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn’t do anything dangerous, but all she does is rub at her wrists, reminding them that they’re still alive and trying to soothe the angry red welts that have formed on her paper-pale skin despite all the spells on the cuffs.

“Here,” the doctor says, showing her a door with a plaque on the top which simply reads _Elissa Reid_. “Don’t worry, she’s as qualified as all our other therapists,” the doctor tells her, as if she cares. “She just wanted to come across as more casual and less scary.” His words are perfectly polite and his face is carefully sketched neutral, but something about the way he talks and looks at the door makes her think that he doesn’t like Elissa Reid very much.

He leaves her outside the door and for a moment she wonders whether or not to go in, but she’s sure Elissa Reid is expecting her. She turns the handle gently, starting at the cold metal against her fingers, so different to the smooth bedsheets or the cuffs which were enchanted to avoid contact with her skin. She opens the door quietly and gently; at Hogwarts they’d destroyed the door as they attempted to breach the walls, and look where that led her.

“Lavender Brown!” a voice said merrily from across the room, and for a moment all the girl being addressed could do is stand and stare.

The room is colourful.

The room is _colourful_.

The floorboards are a vivid shade of blue and the walls are slightly lighter and the windowpanes darker, and then there’s a red carpet and the seats are green and plushy rather than the bare skeleton of sticks the doctor always uses. The curtains are pink, and the whole room is bright and vivid and _alive_. In another life, she might have laughed at the blatantly clashing colours, but now all she wants is to drink it all in and never go back to her white room.

Before, she thought that White meant Clean, and now, After, she knows that what White actually means is Soulless.

“Don’t just stand there, sit down,” the voice says, and Lavender moves, as though in a daze, to sit down in an olive-green armchair. “Right, I’m Mrs Reid,” the voice says, and a hand passes her an electric blue blanket. “Make yourself comfortable, girl, do you think I insisted on bringing all these chairs in so you could sit as stiff as a board?”

Lavender spreads the blue blanket over her lap and relaxes a little bit, rubbing her hands softly over the blue wool. She’d never realised how cold she’d been until this room – not necessarily for warmth, but for colour, for light and brightness and _life_.

“I know it takes a bit of getting used to,” Mrs Reid says. She has a Welsh accent; it makes everything that she says singsong, like a paler version of Parvati’s beautiful accent. “I prefer colours to white, though, so this is what you’re stuck with.” Lavender nods, a smile hovering around the corners of her mouth.

“So,” Mrs Reid says, leaning back with a twinkle in her blue eyes and her brown hair falling to her shoulders. “We’re going to ignore protocol entirely –” and Lavender smiles at this, because the idea is as appealing as anything she’s ever done, “– and I’m going to start out by asking you to tell me a bit about yourself. Anything,” she says, and smiles so engagingly that Lavender has to smile back.

Neither of them speaks for a while, before Lavender opens her mouth. “People call me Lavender but I feel like that’s not my name anymore. I like flowers and butterflies and I hate white and I love the colours in your room.” Mrs Reid nods, giving Lavender her full attention.

“Speak up,” she says gently, and smiles to let Lavender know it’s okay.

“I was best friends with Parvati, and she hated orange and loved watching the sunrise and sunset and she had a bangle which she always wore on her wrist even in lessons under a disillusionment charm because it was her grandmother’s. She was a morning person,” Lavender says, and then stops, feeling sort of befuddled. “I’m sorry,” she says a second later, “I’m doing it all wrong.” She was supposed to be talking about herself, not her best friend. But in her defence, her best friend is a part of her, so maybe she’s still talking about herself? She doesn’t know.

“There’s no right or wrong way to answer that question,” Mrs Reid says reassuringly, steepling her fingers and looking straight at Lavender. “Do you know what I learned about you from that? I learnt that people call you Lavender but you feel like that’s not your name, you like flowers and butterflies and colours but hate white, and that you care about your best friend more that you care about yourself.”

Lavender nods once, slowly, because Mrs Reid has it right, she got it in one, she’s perfectly on track.

* * *

“So,” Mrs Reid says, watching her carefully “Tell me something that’s bothering you.” Here is something Lavender like about Mrs Reid: she treats Lavender as though she’s strong. The doctors, the nurses, they all treat her like spun glass, liable to shatter in an instant if they touch her at all. Mrs Reid treats Lavender like Lavender can hold up against anything, and that makes Lavender feel strong, even if she isn’t really.

Lavender looks down at the blue blanket spread on her lap, tangling her fingers together to create a net woven out of flesh and bone. There’s silence between the two of them for a moment. Not an awkward silence, just a comfortable one filled with patience because sometimes you need to take your time to construct a proper answer to a question, and both of them understand that. That’s another thing Lavender likes about Mrs Reid.

“Some things exist nowhere,” she says finally, because she woke up several mornings ago from a dream about laughing next to the Black Lake with Parvati and realised: where is her smile and the joyful laugh Lavender always associated with dark honey? They are things which could be touched and felt, and they’re still present – Lavender knows that because they weigh down on her heart like stones full of secrets. But she can’t see or hear them anymore, so they exist, but they don’t exist where anyone can feel them; they exist nowhere.

“What do you mean?” Mrs Reid asks.

“It’s like – like –” Lavender can’t help but stumble over her words, “It’s like there are some things which exist, and they could be touched and felt, like Parvati’s laugh and her smile. But I can’t touch them now, and I can’t hear them anymore, so where do they exist? They must exist,” she continued hurriedly, “because I can feel them inside, sometimes, still, and other people who knew her well must have as well. But they exist nowhere. They don't have a place to exist anymore.” It’s a terribly sad thought.

“Do you remember where Vanished objects go?” Mrs Reid asks at last, and Lavender’s a little puzzled at the apparently off-topic question but she trusts Mrs Reid. Besides, the answer is an easy one; it’s an answer the Ravenclaws spread endlessly during small breaks in that final battle, an answer the Gryffindors took disproportionate pride in.

“Into non-being, which is to say, everything,” Lavender says. She heard that from Parvati during a lull in the Battle, and Parvati had heard it from Padma, who had heard McGonagall say it.

“Exactly. After Parvati died –” Lavender tries not to flinch at this, and mostly succeeds, “– those things you mentioned, the intangible ones, maybe you could say that they were Vanished. Which means –”

“They’re _everywhere_ ,” Lavender breaths. Her imagination is full of this now, suddenly. Parvati’s laugh and her smile have left her body and infused the world with their joy. It’s the loveliest thought, and one that brings more comfort to her than she can say, a bright blue blanket for her mind to wrap around itself and revel in the hint of hope it carries. Her own smile might have pieces of Parvati’s in it, now. “Thank you,” she says, and she means it from the bottom of her heart.

* * *

The doctor comes to sit by her bed, and for the first time that she can remember, Lavender sees him fidget nervously.

“Lavender,” he says, “How are you feeling?” Lavender considers this questions and shrugs, which is still more than he gets out of her usually. “I have news,” he says, and by the way his voice cracks and he’s speaking so slowly she guesses that it’s not the good kind of news.

“Okay,” she says to him, her voice just a little bit rusty.

“You know how you’ve been asking about your parents?” he says, and she nods, because it’s all she’ll ever talk to him about. If she needs to talk about anything else, she’ll do it with Mrs Reid. “Well, we found out today how they died.” He’s lying, of course, he’s known for a long time but didn’t trust her with the information.

“Okay.”

“Their home was targeted,” he says slowly, as though drawing out the words will help it hurt less. He’s wrong. “When some of the Death Eaters who fled the Battle knew that they were being hunted down they – they decided to take some people down with them. Your family was killed at home. Sixteen people were killed in total. The Death Eaters have gone to Azkaban.”

* * *

Did you know that some people are liars? She’s so certain about this: he’s only trying to fool her, to dupe her, to deceive her. He wants to break her spirit and crush her heart and snap her life in half. He wants to put a ceiling over her soul. She won't let him.

(Somewhere, deep in the unconscious of her mind, she’s aware of pushing the thought that _he might be right_ down

and down

and down.)


	3. one for sorrow

(She's in a room. She doesn't know anything, except she's in a room, because there's an unnatural stillness and stuffiness that's all around her that only comes of being encased in four walls and a ceiling. It's too dark to see anything, and she blinks several times to try and make sure that what she's seeing is real – but she can't tell, can she? (She's just the Crazy Girl, and if she thinks that she's in a dark room then she's probably not in a dark room.)

Then the darkness clears itself away, moving in eddies and small swirls that are almost enchanting, hypnotising, taking a second and an age to clear itself up.

She looks around, and tries to register the facts which cram into her mind. She's in Hogwarts, standing in the Great Hall. She's alone. When her head turns, she can see that the tables are pushed against the wall – some of them look destroyed, legs ripped off and benches overturned. The banners of House emblems are all ripped, scraps of still-bright fabric lying around on the floor. She turns, but her feet seem stuck to the floor, unable to move. Her hands twist uselessly around her body, fluttering downwards and then back up, unsure whether or not to try and touch her feet or not. This is the end of the Battle, isn't it? An empty side, and neither side truly winning.

There's a cawing noise from one of the benches, one that makes her look up sharply. There's a magpie perched on the overturned table nearest to her. It watches her with sharp, intelligent eyes, before cawing again and fluffing up its feathers, sidling up the table before coming back down, all the time watching her with a sharp gleam in its dark eyes.

It makes her think of a ditty her mother used to tell her whenever they saw one of the birds in the park. Magpies – one for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding and four for a death. One for sorrow. It seems fitting somehow, and she feels herself almost smiling at the bird in front of her before another stray thought brings her to a halt.

Isn't this what everybody tells her? Nothing is real. Nothing _she_ thinks up is real, anyway, because her mind is thoroughly Crazy. They're all perfectly sane, of course.

The magpie caws at something behind her and flies away. Somehow, she knows that she doesn't want to turn around, but then a voice comes from behind her. “Hello, sugar.”

She whips around, hair flying around to sting her face, fists clenching and unclenching sporadically, her hands seemingly determined to prove how useless they can be.

It's _him_. Of course it is.

“This isn't real,” she whispers as he stalks towards her. “I'm dreaming.” He smiles. “You're in Azkaban.” Isn't that what they'd told her? Or was he dead? So many people in her life are dead now.

He just keeps on smiling, yellowed teeth showing between pale lips as he reaches her. She leans back, quietly desperate, trying to avoid his touch, but he effortlessly takes her chin in his hands and turns her face from side to side as though inspecting her. Which is probably what's happening, she realises, with a vivid stab of fear. He did this to her face, and he turned her into a monster just like him. She should hate him, but – she's too scared. She's a coward, coward, coward, and too scared of a wolf in her dreams to be angry.

“No,” she whispers. She doesn't know why she's whispering, because the Great Hall is empty apart from her and him, but maybe her voice box is determined to prove to her how useless it can be as well, as though she doesn't already know that all the worthless pieces of her come together to make a supremely useless person. “No. This isn't real.” Her skin is crawling like it's real, though, and the stabbing of fear in her stomach is making her feel sick as like it's real. Her heart thumps in her chest as though it's real, though, _thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump_ , fluttering like a bird desperate to get out of the cage that is her body.

(Like a magpie, maybe?)

He only grins again, long fingernails scratching her face again, leaning closer so that she can smell the acrid stench coming off him. It smells like fear, and with that thought she abruptly realises that she doesn't know which of them is the one who smells like gut-wrenching terror. Her breath catches in her throat and she tries to gasp in a breath because she needs needs needs air to breathe and she needs to breathe to live.

“You make it real by dreaming about it, sweetheart,” he says to her, baring his teeth. She shudders, and tears start to slide their lazy way down her face. “This is _your_ reality.”

“It's not real,” she says desperately. Her voice is shaking, and there's an sense of tugging in her gut, as though someone is grasping it and trying to twist her around. She's gasping, and her throat is burning, and tears are still sliding down her face, past her lips and onto his hands where they're still positioned on her jaw. “Please,” she sobs. “It's not real, it's not real, it's not real.” She can barely get the shaking words past her numb lips, as though perhaps the words themselves are terrified to come out of her mouth and into the air between her and him. _Not not not real._ Not real, not real, not real. Three has always been her lucky number. Three for a wedding, she thinks wildly.

“So why don't you wake up?” He's just watching her, a cruel smile tugging the corners of his lips up, his own scars twisting with the movement of his skin. His hands tighten, abruptly, suddenly, until his grip on her jaw is painful and his nails are digging into skin made damp with her own tears. “If this isn't real, then why – don't – you – wake – up?” Each word is punctuated by a sudden jab of pain as he drags her closer to him, close enough that she can see exactly how grotesque his scars are. Hers must be a hundred times worse.

She's breathing raggedly, her voice caught in her throat, words too terrified to crawl make their way out of her mouth. She doesn't know what to say, and she's a coward, a coward, a coward, so she keeps gasping and keeps silent, because she's a coward and if she doesn't fight will he just go away? His smirk grows and he loosens his grip on her enough that she can yank out of his hand, almost overbalance, still sobbing, pressing her hands to her face in a desperate attempt to stop the tears leaking out of her eyes. There's a weight in her stomach that won't lessen, and her throat doesn't seem to want to work.

“How were you ever Sorted into Gryffindor?” he asks, and saunters away.

She curls up on the ground, trying to suppress the sobs and tears, trying to tell herself that she's not weak, but she is, isn't she? She is, she's weak and weak and weak and she can't face reality, this one or another one.

* * *

“Lavender?” someone says, and the Great Hall is empty again as she looks around for the source of the calmly professional voice she feels like she should know. Then he's back in front of her, snarling until his face is truly more wolf-like that human.

She screams, trying to jump backwards, wondering whether this is what will happen to her, and then he's gone and she can hear that almost-familiar voice again – but it's not calm any more, it's tense and hard and saying, “Give her another dose.”

She wants to know what this is, what he's talking about, a dose of what, but there's a pinprick in her upper arm and she feels like she's spiralling downwards – but that's ridiculous, she's still standing, she's in the same place, her feet are still stuck fast.

* * *

She looks around the Great Hall wildly, and sees him walking away, and his voice echoes through the Great Hall one more time before he opens the door just a crack to leave. “It's your fault they're dead, you know,” he says, and lets himself out.

No. The door shuts loudly.

No. The noise echoes around the room, bouncing off the stone walls again and again and again.

_No._

This is what she's been so desperately trying to tell herself. This is what she's been trying to avoid all along, isn't it?

But he's gone and they're here, Mum and Dad and little brother, all staring at her blankly. All of them unmarked, unblemished, unlike her, dead by the Death Spell, not ripped apart by a werewolf. She stares and tries to scuttle backwards, but her feet are still stuck and the magpie is still screeching, one for sorrow, sorrow, sorrow, too much of it for her small body to hold and she screams without her family still standing in front of her having to say anything.

It is her fault, that's the problem. If she hadn't been so _stupid_ , if she'd been quick enough with her feet or her wand or even her fists when he'd confronted her, she might have survived the Battle, might have gone back home to Mum and Dad and little brother, she might have been able to _protect_ them, because there was only so much that Mum could do on her own. Their bodies simply stare at her, held up as though with strings. The only part of them which looks vaguely alive are their light eyes, so similar to her own, which stare at her out of pale faces, accusing and blaming her. _You could have saved us,_ their eyes seem to tell her. Her heart is jumping in her chest and she's gasping and whispering over and over and over, “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” so quietly she doesn't even know whether they hear her, and does it matter if they hear her? She's dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, and she'll wake up soon, she has to, she has to, she has to. She quiets her sobs, presses trembling fingers to her mouth, tries to steady her breathing. She watches them watch her, and nobody in the Great Hall moves. The weight in her gut doesn't go away, though. It makes her want to gasp out loud, but she doesn't want to disturb the silence and so she just sits there, trying desperately to calm herself down, to wake up, gasping into her hands.

Until the magpie moves, flying down at her, perching on the floor barely a foot away. It cocks its head at her, sharp eye staring our of the side of its head, almost frightening in its intelligence.

 _One for sorrow._ She's barely formed the thought when the magpie shudders and begins to split in two, and those two begin to split in two. She screams then, watching these birds multiply in front of her and _oh god her feet are still stuck to the floor_ she can't _move_ and she has to run, every part of her bod screaming at her to run, run, run away from this unnatural thing.

As though the magpies have all the power, her surroundings shift and start to change and she's never experienced such amazingly gut-wrenching terror as the world around her shifts and changes and her feet are _still trapped in place_ and she can't _move_ and oh _god_ what if – what if – what if –

Then she's at home – she's standing in front of the front door as though it's just closed, and Mum and Dad and little brother are all sitting on the couch, heads turned a little to face her, to look at her, their light eyes still telling her their story. _This is how we waited for you,_ they seemed to say. Was she hearing or imagining their words? _This is how we waited for you to come back to us._

“No,” she whispers. “No, no, no.”

 _This is how we waited for you so we could be together again,_ they seemed to say, and it no longer matters whether or not she's imagining the words or hearing them because it's so _loud_ in her mind that it doesn't make a difference. She can't hear anything except their words. _This is how we died,_ she hears, and cries out like someone's punched her, falling back against the door and pressing her hands to her eyes.

“No,” she gasps into her pale skin. “This isn't real. Please, please, this isn't real, _please_.”

“You can't run from your own reality, darling,” a rough, familiar says, and he's there again, behind the couch that her family is sitting on, running a dirty fingernail over their skin, pressing hard enough for blood to well up (if they could bleed, that is) and she wants to shout at him to get away, get away, get away, that they're her family, that she won't let him hurt them as well, but they don't react at all to his touch, just continue to stare blankly at her with accusing eyes that send waves of shame running through her body. Her skin feels as though there are insects all over her and someone's stabbing a white-hot knife into her heart as she begs, says “please,” for something, anything but this.

Then the magpies fly into her line of vision, so many more than just one, all of them hopping up and down a couple of times, ruffling their glossy feathers, all tilting their heads to the left in unnatural sync, caw at her in such perfect unison that it sounds like one magpie. She doesn't want to, she doesn't want to count them, but they split into three groups of three and watch her with sharply intelligent eyes and she can't deny that there are nine magpies in front of her – three and three and three. Nine. The room around her blurs a little, and then changes all at once so she's back in the ruined Great Hall with the magpies for company.

She can remember, sitting in front of nine magpies, the ditty her mother used to tell her when it was just the two of them sitting on a colourful picnic blanket and pointing at a cluster of magpies cawing in the distance. Dad and little brother would be running around somewhere else, playing cricket or rugby, so it was just Lavender and Mum, sitting together on the blanket.

 _One for sorrow,_ she would say, and wait for Lavender's young, childishly high voice to join in the rhyme. _Two for mirth. Three for a wedding and four for a death. Five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret not to be told. Eight for heaven, nine for hell, and ten for the devil's own self._

It seems like such a childish memory, so far away. It seems like something that happened in another world, in an alternate universe where magic didn't exist, but Lavender remembers it all so perfectly that she supposes it must be real.

“Nine for hell,” she whispers at the magpies in front of her, and they all look at her. One of them caws approvingly. Her heart is banging in her chest in earnest now, causing her to lose her breath and her hands to tremble slightly. The rhythm of her heartbeat echoes through her head, again and again and again.

* * *

“ _Lavender_ ,” that same professional voice as before says, and the Great Hall seems to blur again.

Yes, she thinks, looking around. It's empty once more, and she wills with all her might to go towards the voice that's calling her – yanking desperately to get her feet moving, waving her arms to keep her balance, all the while focusing on that _voice_.

The Great Hall is lightening now, as though there's another image behind it, fighting to come through and she could _scream_ with the frustration of wanting and not getting.

“It's no good, she's still too agitated,” the voice says, and it's stopped being calm and now it's just purely professional and she knows, she just _knows_ that she's close to it – “Put her back under.” There's a brief silence, and then: “Well, hurry up! Give her another dose!”

She's heard those words, she knows what that means, she remembers what happened the last time she heard those words, remembers that after “another dose” this trap of a dreamworld became clearer and pulled her into it further, so she yanks away from the voice, screams, trying to remember how to vocalise words and not simple, desperate shrieks –

Then there are hands she can't see on her arms and her legs, keeping her pinned in place as she feels that familiar pinprick in her upper arm, and, yes, the Great Hall is solidifying around her again, empty and ruined and then she does scream because she was _so close_ to something –

* * *

Then there are magpies in front of her again, only four of them rather than nine. _Four for death._ But hasn't everyone she loved already died? They caw at her and then fly away, over her head so she can't twist around to see them, and then something terrible is in front of her, something worse than her unblemished and unmarked parents and little brother.

Parvati.

She's been sewn together, roughly and with clumsy stitches; somehow well enough to be standing, motionless, staring at Lavender with dark, beautiful eyes that are a cruel mockery of her life.

“No,” Lavender whispers, and she's truly struggling to get away now, but no matter how hard she pulls her leg will not come free and Parvati is simply standing there, motionless, watching her. “No, no, NO,” Lavender screams, because this is her best friend, her _best friend_ , and she's come back to life in the most gruesome way possible. “Please, Parvati –” Lavender says, and she doesn't even know what she's pleading for. “Parvati –”

Then she hears Parvati's voice in her mind and she knows exactly what she was pleading for. _Why was it you who lived?_ Lavender hears, and screams. “I don't know,” she sobs. She'd thought that it was the strongest ones who lived, but then there was her, the outlier, the exception to the rule, the special case, because she's weak weak weak and somehow she outlived her family and her best friend and _nobody_ should have the right to do that, not until they were old and grey and ready to die themselves.

“I'm sorry,” she whispers at her best friend, who doesn't move. She just stares.

The magpies have multiplied again, a flock of nine, and with a screech they all fly around her, beating at her with their wings until she's gasping, trying to bring her hands up to shield herself from the beating wings and whirling feathers that fill the air around her. With a jolt, her surroundings change again, so that she's standing outside of Hogwarts looking at the ruin the castle has become; the towers have collapsed, long lines of stones lying scattered in front of her as though by some giant's hand.

“Why am I here?” she asks the magpies, and they assemble in front of her as they did before, in three groups of three so that it's unmistakeable; nine magpies. Something like realisation registers in her mind. _Nine for hell._ “So am I in hell, then? Am I dead?” she asks the bird in front of her. They all cock their heads to the side, ruffle their feathers.

But they don't answer her question. Of course they don't.


	4. dreams of fools' gold

When Lavender opens her eyes again, her heart clenches in her chest and she blinks her eyes open as she tries to take in her surroundings. She’s terrified, so scared that she will still be in the Great Hall or her house. She’s terrified that the blank staring faces of her parents and little brother will be there to confront her, but even worse – she’s terrified that Parvati will be there, sewn together in a macabre parody of her life.

But no – she’s in the White Room still, lying in her bed. She can feel the sheets against her body and the shackles against her hands. If she twists her head, she can see the white door with its small peephole, where doctors so often gather and talk loudly to one another about her, as though she is deaf and blind to their eyes peering through at her.

The sheet covering her body seems heavy, too large and too dense for her too-small, too-fragile body to handle and she wiggles, tries to move; then she realises that her feet are shackled as well as her hands, the tugging on her ankles insistent and terrifying and she can’t get the rough sheet off her overheated body and she can barely _move_ in the bed and oh, god, where is everyone?

She doesn’t realise that she’s making noise until she hears the caw of a bird over the rough, desperate keening that’s making its way past her clenched jaw. When she looks at the edge of her bed, there is a magpie perched there. It hops off the knob at the end of the bed and up her leg, and she can feel its claws clutching at her leg through the sheet, sharp and unforgiving. It spreads its wings a little to keep its balance as it makes its way up her body until it’s perching on her collarbone, staring down at her face, and she can’t help but try to get away from it, stretching her neck as far back into the pillow as she can.

(Her heart is beating so heavily that she’s almost surprised that the magpie doesn’t react to it, _thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump_ , powerful and fluttering all at once.

Abruptly, the thought of a bird inside her chest comes back to her, a bird struggling to be free – a _magpie_ , maybe, that elusive tenth magpie she hasn’t seen yet, _ten for the devil’s own self_ , trying to get out of the cage that is her body.)

The magpie caws at her, its beak opening and closing, glossy feathers shining with the light of the hospital as it plumps its feathers. Lavender leans back even further – don’t magpies go for the eyes, don’t they like shiny things? Her eyes are the shiniest part of her face – and Lavender can feel tears welling up, and wouldn’t those just make her eyes more irresistible to the magpie?

(This magpie isn’t just a magpie, though, and she knows that.)

“Please,” Lavender says, and her voice is cracked and dry and _old_ , quivering like she doesn’t remember how to use it, shaking with fear just like the rest of her body. (Because she’s a coward, coward, coward, a little coward who can’t face a bird.) “What do you want?”

The magpie doesn’t answer, of course. It just caws at her and touches her cheek with an outstretched wing, and she doesn’t really know what she was expecting but it flies away after that, digging its claws in abruptly before the weight of it disappears, so suddenly that she’s not quite able to follow its flight by turning her head. When she does turn her head, the magpie is gone and she has to press her eyes together to keep the tears spilling out.

She doesn’t know whether they’re tears of sadness or relief.

* * *

The air is suddenly cooler on her skin, a light breeze kissing her face. Her feet are cold. Slowly, Lavender opens her eyes and looks down – she’s sitting on a wooden jetty. Her feet are dangling over the edge into an almost-opaque body of water that she recognises as the Black Lake. It’s a second later that she notices there are two other feet next to her, ridiculously familiar even though they’re only feet.

Lavender’s eyes trail up the body of the girl next to her with steadily increasing dread until her eyes meet Parvati’s and her heart is still beating like a trapped bird in her chest, creating an unlikely tempo for this seemingly calm scene.

“Parvati?” Lavender croaks. Her voice is still dry, but getting better, she thinks. When she tries to push herself up, to get into a standing position, her arms fail her. Of course they do, she thinks bitterly. Because she’s weak, and weak, and weak.

“Lavender,” Parvati replies with a smile, and oh God, this is so painful, this is _exactly_ like hearing her voice again. Lavender can’t help it; her eyes dart everywhere, try to drink in all of Parvati that they can. It’s exactly like it was, and a small, ridiculous hope flares inside her chest; she can feel it, the warmth helping her heart calm down.

“Parvati,” she says again, hopeless and helpless, like a lost girl. “Parvati.” Just saying her name is like a balm for her heart.

“Lavender!” Parvati exclaims, and she’s _smiling_ and leaning back and her t-shirt is drifting upwards so that when her eyes flicker down Lavender can see smooth skin. “Lavender.” Lavender leans forward almost instinctively to follow Parvati, and her heart aches desperately.

“I miss you,” Lavender blurts out, because saying this is the most important thing in the world – even saying it to a dream Parvati is better than nothing. “I miss you _so much_ , Parwa, god.”

Parvati tilts her head just like she would in real life and smiles in an almost puzzled way. “Miss me? Lav, I’m right here.”

“But you’re not,” Lavender says, and her voice is quivering again, and her throat is closing up and her eyes are warm. “This is a dream. This isn’t real. This isn’t real. This isn’t real, Parwa, and I miss you so, so, so much.” She raises a hand to rub her eyes, trying to stop the tears from making their way out. Her own words keep rushing around her head, merciless and cruel; _this isn’t real, this isn’t real, this isn’t real, Parwa, and I miss you so, so, so much_. There they are again, words in groups of threes – the ones that the doctors say are a sign of madness, but hasn’t she always liked things in groups of threes?

“Lavender, no, don’t cry –” Parvati says helplessly. She reaches out, her hand stopping centimetres away from Lavender’s skin, hovering there like she isn’t sure whether she’s allowed to touch. (And this is ridiculous, because Parvati has always been allowed to reach out and touch Lavender.) “I’m here, see?” she says instead, her hand still between the two of them. “I’m right here.”

“You died,” Lavender says, and her voice is completely out of her control now, and there’s really no point in trying not to break down, so she does, shoulders shaking and face contorting. “You _died_ , I _saw_ you. There was blood everywhere. Your body _separated_ –”

She’s crying too hard to continue at this point, tears causing her already shaking hands to slip over her face.

“I don’t – I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Parvati says, uncertainly. Her hand is still hovering between them.

There’s a caw from behind Lavender, and even though she knows what she’s going to find she turns around slowly as though the speed of her turn will change what’s behind her.

It doesn’t, of course; the magpie behind her is glossy, black and white, and ruffles its feathers when they make eye contact. She wipes her eyes and sniffs, and when she opens her eyes again there are six magpies in front of her.

“Lavender?” Parvati asks. “Are those birds?” It’s a silly question, but Parvati has always liked confirmation for even the most obvious of things, Lavender remembers suddenly. Her heart feels as though it’s splitting in two. _One for sorrow. Six for gold._

“Parwa,” she says suddenly, turning back to the form of her best friend. “Parwa,” she says again, her voice weaker, because she knows what happens in nightmares and she knows that this, whatever it looks like at first, is a nightmare of the largest proportions.

(This is a nightmare of gold, _six for gold_. Do you know what happens in nightmares? The dearest things in your life are taken away from you. Six for gold, but this dream is made of fool’s gold, shining brightly with a nightmare of disappointment hidden below its surface.)

Parvati’s hand is still reaching out towards Lavender, somehow still not touching her.

(She doesn’t know how she knows, but she knows. There is an approving caw from behind her as the bubble of thought forms in her mind, and she tries to square her shoulders, thinks with a determination that she hasn’t felt for a long time that _she will get this nightmare finished_.)

Slowly, Lavender spreads her hand open to mimic Parvati’s. _This is right_ , she thinks almost absently; she has always been the paler reflection of her best friend.

“Lavender?” Parvati asks, but doesn’t resist as Lavender moves her hand forward. It’s a miracle that her hand keeps steady as tears trail down her face, but there is a caw from behind her and Lavender just wants this to be _over_ , she wants to wake _up_ , so she pushes away the last few millimetres between them as her hand meets Parvati’s, matching each other perfectly – finger to finger and palm to palm. Their hands are still the same size, even in a dream.

For one lovely moment, things are still and peaceful – even the Black Lake seems to have quietened its lapping waves for them – and the moment is so perfect that Lavender wants to keep it forever.

(Then, of course, because this is how nightmares go, it all turns to shit.)

Cracks travel up Parvati’s arm, and it takes a moment for Lavender to realise that these are cracks in the body, breaking the skin. In that moment, the damage has travelled all the way to Parvati’s neck, and she is starting to bleed, the cracks widening with every second that goes past in this dream-world.

“Oh no, no, no, Parwa,” Lavender says frantically, snatching her hand away and jumping to her feet; she can feel the splinters from the wooden jetty digging into her bare feet and doesn’t care. “Parwa – Parwa – _Parvati_ –” All her resolve to just _do_ the horrible thing and get this nightmare over with has melted out of her body, leaving her unstable and wobbly as she tries to step away and she can’t can’t can’t any more –

Parvati opens her mouth to reply and blood drips out of her mouth. In another second, her body has slumped over on the jetty, empty and lifeless and bleeding. Lavender almost doesn’t recognise the noises coming out of her mouth, grief and terror and desperation mixed into a horrible guttural noise she desperately wants to block out but can’t stop making.

The six magpies caw from behind her, and when Lavender turns to look at them they look more smugly self-confident than any bird has a right to be. She wants to scream at them; she wants to _hit_ them like she’s never wanted to hit anything before, and she screams and screams and screams, stepping back, scuttling away from the blood that the wood of the jetty is drinking. Can you get bloodstains out of wood? Can you get bloodstains off a soul?

* * *

When she tries to sit upright, still gasping and eyes still darting around in terror, she’s back in the white room and her hands and feet are still chained down, and the suffocating blanket is still covering her body; the Doctor is sitting by the door, and he looks up, his face wearing an expression of mild surprise.

“Hello, Lavender,” he says, very softly and very gently. He puts his books down very quietly, and moves towards her very slowly.

She flinches away.

He stops. “Do you remember where you are?”

Yes, no, she does and she doesn’t. She was at Hogwarts, and at home, and back here, and then on the shores of the Black Lake; she was with Greyback and her family and Parvati and the magpies. She is in a white room and she is lost in her mind.

Without giving her enough time to formulate an answer, the doctor walks out of the door, his white coat only very narrowly avoiding being caught as he slams it shut behind him, leaving Lavender in an empty room with her own heartbeat for company.

Her hands are still chained by the wrists to the side of the bed and her feet are still chained by their ankles, she discovers after a moment of jerking, heart-jumping panic when she can’t move her legs. She bites her lip so hard that it hurts, and doesn’t scream.

This leaves her with three options: one, that the segment of the dream where she was back in this room had a grain of truth in it, her Inner Eye picking out this detail from her reality and importing it into her dream as Professor Trelawney has claimed was possible; two, that that particular segment of the dream had not been a dream, but reality, which meant that the magpie was real and, oh, oh, she couldn’t think about that; and three, perhaps worst of all, that this was a continuation of that dream, meaning that she was still dreaming.

Ms Reid comes in at that moment, though, just after she’s sorted through the thoughts in her head and come up with these three conclusions, and Lavender tries her best to set those thoughts aside for now.

“Lavender!” she says, and smiles, and unchains her like it’s nothing. She helps Lavender to sit up under the disapproving stare of Dave, and when that’s done she turns around to stare at him until he grumbles incoherently under his breath and leaves the two of them.

“He’s probably off to the coffee machine,” Ms Reid says conspiratorially, conjuring two chairs and sitting Lavender down in one before reclining in the other. “You’ve had us worried, you know, this past five days. Nutrition spells aren’t good for the body for long periods of time.”

“Five days?” Lavender asks. Ms Reid nods.

“You’ve been having screaming nightmares and hallucinations, from what we can tell,” she says gently. “The doctors’ve been injecting you with – stuff, drugs, to keep you under and hopefully not screaming.”

“It didn’t work,” Lavender says, quietly, her fingers running over the blanket that had been draped on top of her. “Maybe it helped not showing – helped them not to see. But they didn’t stop. The nightmares,” she clarifies, because everyone needs her to clarify everything, these days, since apparently when she says ‘they’ her mind has gone wonky and she’s referring to the cats she had at Hogwarts or something equally ridiculous. “The nightmares didn’t stop.”

“What did you dream about?” Ms Reid asks, and even though her manner is completely different from Professor Trelawney’s – more matter of fact, more brisk – it still feels enough like Divination lessons to make Lavender smile, a little, the corner of her mouth twisting upwards.

“Fenrir Greyback,” she says, trying her best to keep her voice from faltering, because if she isn’t afriad of saying _Voldemort_ then Greyback is no different. “My parents. My brother. Parvati.” She hesitates, but she’s always been able to trust Ms Reid, so she continues. “Magpies.”

“Magpies?” Ms Reid asks. She doesn’t have a clipboard, but she’s watching Lavender intently as the words formulate, and Lavender feels as though she’s listening intently, no matter how ridiculous the words sound.

“There was a rhyme – about magpies,” Lavender says quietly. “When I was younger, that my mum used to tell me. One for sorrow –” she stops, and looks around, and her hands are shaking and her eyes are full of tears. She hates the magpies because she’s terrified of the magpies, and she _feels_ ; she feels so intensely that her stomach roils and she puts a hand over her mouth in case she throws up.

“It’s okay,” Ms Reid says reassuringly, and oh, this is another good thing about Ms Reid; she never pushes too hard. “You don’t have to say it.”

“Thank you,” Lavender whispers.

“Is there anything else that you’d like to talk to me about?”

Lavender hesitates, and Mrs Reid leans back, watching her with kind eyes. “Yes,” Lavender says eventually. Mrs Reid inclines her head, a little, and waits patiently for the next words to form. “I dreamt I was in this room, and a magpie perched on my body.”

“We don’t allow animals in the hospital,” Mrs Reid says. Her voice is gentle, reassuring.

“I know,” Lavender says, “but – it was so vivid. My feet were chained just like they were when I – when I woke up. But I can’t tell if I actually woke up. I don’t know if I’m still dreaming.” She’s just waiting for another magpie to show up so that her nightmare can resume. It’s the worst feeling that she has ever experienced; being unable to trust her mind or her senses when they tell her that _this is real_. Her heart is beating too quickly and there is a crawling, itchy feeling underneath her skin as she looks around and wonders if this is just another segment of her dream.

Mrs Reid reaches over, puts her warm hand over Lavender’s. “You’re awake,” she says. “Can you feel that?” she asks, squeezing Lavender’s hand. “You’re awake.” Lavender nods, and as though she can sense that Lavender is still not entirely convinced, Mrs Reid continues, in a gentle voice that makes Lavender want to sleep. “This morning, when I woke up, I almost stepped on my cat’s tail as I got out of bed, and she was massively angry with me about it. I ate toast for breakfast and threatened to feed my cat to a dog, but ended up giving her food anyway. I Flooed into work and got some ash in my mouth, and it tasted terrible.”

Lavender nods, looking around at the room with no magpies in it, hoping that this level of detail is enough to prove that this is truly reality. 

“Here,” Mrs Reid says, waving her wand so that a handkerchief floats out of the end. “Grab that. You see the patterns?” There are patterns, scrolling prettily over the delicate cloth, complicated lines swirling over the white. “It’s difficult for your mind to incorporate this sort of detail into dreams,” she says gently. “If you can look at it for a while, and it doesn’t change, and you can look away and look back at it and it’s still the same – you’re awake.”

She waits patiently while Lavender tries this, opening one eye at a time and then both, looking away and back, folding the handkerchief and unfolding it. Maybe this is enough, she thinks, and whispers a quiet thank you.


	5. voice as thin as spider-silk

She doesn’t know what they want from her, she doesn’t know what they expect from her. Wasn’t it more of a Slytherin trait, to be able to read what a person wanted from you just by their body and the hidden meanings behind their words? There is a heavy feeling in her heart that weighs her entire body down as the doctors ask her question after question after question, about her nightmares, about what she sees and how she feels and what she does and – well. She knows that they’re just trying to help her, in their own way, this revolving array of doctors who accompany the constant doctor Dave in his trips to her bedside, but she didn’t know it was possible to dread doctors so much. When she was little it was always the dentist she dreaded, having to open her mouth wide for what seemed like hours, having to feel something foreign pick in between her teeth, feeling her mouth dry up as all the saliva was sucked out.

Now, doctors gather around a little too closely and restrain her a little too tightly, and they ask her questions, and this is so much worse than a dentist.

“I don’t know,” she says in reply to most of their questions, once it’s become clear that they’re just dismissing the answers she tries to give. (“What do you see most often in your dreams?” one of them had asked her, and when she replied, “Magpies,” the other one had very nearly rolled his eyes.) “I don’t know. I don’t know.” They seem to be more satisfied with this answer, because she’s just the Crazy Girl and she wouldn’t know, would she, the content of the nightmares that fill her brain. No, she wouldn’t know that, they’d know about her nightmares much better than her. Eventually, she must do something terribly right or terribly wrong, because the revolving array of doctors stop visiting and it’s just doctor Dave who enters the room with meals, often opening his mouth but eventually closing it again because neither of them really have anything to say to the other.

She has her handkerchief with its beautiful pattern, but most of the time that she’s dreaming she doesn’t use it, because when she dreams she doesn’t quite remember that she’s dreaming. It’s not unusual, Mrs Reid assures her. It’s far more common for people to have no lucidity in dreams. But when she is uncertain about her own reality, the fabric helps to anchor her, as Mrs Reid has predicted it would. The intricate patterns are so lovely – they remind her of the equally intricate henna patterns that Parvati used to sport on her hands after every holiday, but for some reason this reminder comforts rather than hurts her. Maybe because it’s a comfort, to remember that Parvati’s beauty can live on in a million different ways, if she’s just willing to open her eyes and see them; a pattern in a handkerchief, the memory of her laugh, the boldness of an electric blue blanket. She spends a lot of her time tracing the handkerchief patterns with one thin finger, around and over and around again, and when the doctors look at her sceptically she realises that this is another thing they see as a sign of her craziness, and has to bite her lip to keep tears from forming. (She’s not learning, she needs to learn to act how they want her to.)

She’s going to be in here forever, she’s sure of it. It’s simple logic: the doctors all see her as crazy, the Crazy Girl, just crazy and not a person because the two things are mutually exclusive, because crazy isn’t just an adjective, it’s a name and an occupation and the entirety of a personality. And because the doctors all see her as crazy, they’re going to tell each other how she’s feeling and what she likes, and their views will never ever change and she will be a hundred years old and still lying on the same bed in the same room, and probably restrained with the same chains, and the doctors and nurses will point at the door and say, “She’s the crazy girl,” because really, who would remember her name in a hundred years? She’s not sure she would remember her own name in a hundred years.

Divination was a fun class, once upon a time, because seeing the future held such wonderful appeal, but she wishes that she could see any other future for herself, because she hates this one.

* * *

“Talk to me, Lavender,” Mrs Reid says, leaning forward a little bit.

“How do I get out of here?” Lavender asks instead, and Mrs Reid raises her eyebrows.

“Get out? You mean, get discharged?”

Lavender shrugs, and nods, and murmurs, “Yes.”

“Ah,” Mrs Reid says. She looks a little embarrassed. “That’s – a complicated question, Lavender.” Lavender waits patiently for the next words, and Mrs Reid sighs. “Usually, any patient can walk out of a public hospital if they choose to, and we can’t stop them, except,” she sighs, “except when the staff believes that you’ve lost your capacity to make decisions, in which case restraint and sedation is permitted.”

“Oh,” Lavender says.

“And in a psychiatric unit, which you’re in – well, involuntary patients are classified as being mentally ill or mentally disordered, and we’re allowed to keep you in here by force if necessary.”

“Oh,” Lavender says again, because there’s really nothing else to say; she knows just as well as Mrs Reid does that the doctors call her crazy, and that they’re really not very likely to change their opinion of her any time soon.

“As an involuntary patient, your doctor – that’s Dave – and the therapist you’re seeing, me, have to agree that you are no longer a mentally ill person and that you don’t pose a threat to yourself or anyone else, and then you can be discharged. Unofficially, we also try to make sure that you have a carer, or some kind of support system before you leave us, but we can’t keep you in for not having either of those things.”

“Oh,” Lavender says for a third time, thinking about how she was right, she’s never going to leave this place, she’ll be a hundred and still lying there and still miserable. Her voice is thin, like a strand of spider silk. And even if she was able to change the views of the doctors, convince them that she isn’t crazy – and how can she convince other people that she’s not crazy if she isn’t quite sure that she believes it herself? – a support system outside the hospital is something she hasn’t even considered.

“I’m trying, Lavender,” Mrs Reid says. Lavender wonders, a little, whether Mrs Reid believes that she’s crazy.

 _Do you think I’m crazy?_ she wants to ask, but she’s afraid to hear the answer. (How was she ever Sorted into Gryffindor?)

* * *

Did you know that some people died in the war? Of course you do. Did you know that most people lived after the war? Of course you do. But here is something that maybe you didn’t know: some people were left in the limbo, in the grey area of the in-between. They don’t live and they don’t die. Lavender Brown is one of those unlucky people, too broken to live but too whole to die.

It takes her a while to think about this, but she has nothing but time in her white room, and after a while she realises that she has a name for what she’s doing: she’s not living and she’s not dying. She’s _existing_.

Maybe that wouldn’t be so sad in and of itself if she didn’t have memories of wanting to live – wanting to _live_ , properly, joining the fight against the Carrows and the Death Eaters because she wanted a life after Hogwarts that was real and happy and free. She remembers that even during the bleakness that was seventh year, hiding in the Room of Requirement, she was trying to live rather than exist, changing the dust bunnies that gathered on the floor into actual rabbits to make Parwa smile and give everyone something to cuddle. She remembers asking the Room for roses, just to make life a little happier.

She remembers the desperate want to survive that kept her alive during the final battle, that kept her eyes wide and her mind focused as curse after curse came out of her wand, that kept her ducking and dodging the chaos around her, that dredged up spell after spell to cast on the people around her.

She remembers wanting to live, but that’s all: she remembers. She tries, half-heartedly, but she can’t muster up the same will as before, that desire to live is now nothing more than a memory, and that’s when she knows she’s given up hope.

Carefully, she closes her eyes, because she doesn’t want to see the one-for-sorrow magpie that she knows wants to make an appearance.

* * *

“Can I leave?” she asks Dave the doctor, when he comes in to check up on her and give her one of her two daily meals. Without a clock to sunlight it’s difficult to tell what time it is, so she just assumes that he comes in at the same times every day to make things easier for herself. His eyes go wide, and he almost steps back.

“Leave?” he asks. She nods, and waits for his reply even though he seems to be waiting for her to elaborate, even though she’s said all she needs to. “No,” he says at last, after the pause. “Sorry, Lavender.” He watches her carefully for her reaction, so she carefully looks down at her bread and soup and presents him with no visible reaction. (See? She’s learning.)

The next day, presumably, when he comes in, she asks, “Where’s my wand?” He looks confused again, but is quicker to respond this time.

“We’re keeping it safe, near the archives, with the wands of other patients in this ward. You’ll get it back when you’re discharged, or when your therapist and I believe that it’s safe for you to have it back.” He looks carefully at her again, so she eats her bread with careful, precise movements.

“Are people allowed to visit me?” she asks on the third day, and he looks half scared and half excited, like he was expecting her to stop talking at two incidents. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with a crazy girl who talks without screaming, who is not catatonic, like she is a doll who is behaving in a way that he hadn’t programmed her to. “Yes,” he says after a while. “Is there anyone you want me to contact?”

She opens her mouth and realises that she doesn’t know what to say. Well, no – that’s a lie. She knows exactly what she wants to say, who she wants to visit her. The name _Parvati_ is on the tip of her tongue. _Mum and Dad and Brendan_ is a close second, and for a moment her throat is crowded with names that want to be let out into the open air. Then she closes her mouth carefully, catches the words in her teeth and swallows them back down because all of those people are dead and if she asks for them then she will just prove to him that she’s crazy, because he doesn’t understand the gesture of asking, even knowing that they can’t come. It means that she hasn’t forgotten them.

“No, I suppose not,” she says finally, her statement complete with an awkward shrug that pulls at her restraints.

“I’ll see what I can do,” doctor Dave promises, and Lavender wants to roll her eyes because she literally _just_ told him no.

* * *

A couple of visits go by uneventfully after that, and she visits Mrs Reid once. The two of them talk about magpies, but Lavender still feels that awful, panicky pressure building up in her chest when she thinks about trying to recite the poem. Mrs Reid pushes a little harder this time, but eventually lets her be, and talks at her gently until she feels mostly calm again, until her skin has settled more firmly on her bones.

“Dave told me you’d expressed an interest in having people visit you,” Mrs Reid says then, and Lavender kind of wants to roll her eyes again, because hadn’t she said no? Why was that so difficult for everyone to understand?

“I just asked if it was allowed,” she says.

“But do you want anyone to visit you?” Mrs Reid asks. “Dave thinks it’s a good idea, and to be honest, I do too. Human interaction might help you just as much as therapy. Lavender?” she asks, after the silence stretches out for a little too long.

“I do want people to visit me,” Lavender says carefully, “but all the people I want to visit me are dead.” Mrs Reid isn’t quite fast enough to disguise the downwards pull on her mouth. Lavender wonders vaguely whether Mrs Reid pities her, or is disgusted by her, or something else completely, and thinks that she should probably be more concerned about the answer. It’s just – very difficult for her to muster up the energy to care about anything anymore.

“There’s nobody left?” Mrs Reid asks gently. She makes an aborted movement, like she wants to reach forward to touch Lavender but stopped herself at the last second.

Lavender doesn’t quite know how to answer the question. _Nobody close enough_ , maybe. _Nobody else who can see me and not make me ashamed_. In the end, she shrugs. “Not really.”

“What does that mean? What are you thinking?” Mrs Reid pushes gently, and Lavender remembers that this is the person she’s supposed to tell all her thoughts to.

“Nobody who was as close,” Lavender says softly, trying to untangle her thoughts into proper words, proper sentences. Her voice is spider-silk soft again, like it gets when she thinks about Parvati. “Nobody that I don’t mind seeing me – like this. In here.”

Mrs Reid nods. “What about a fellow survivor?”

Lavender’s eyes grow wide. She doesn’t quite know how to understand the mess of jumbled emotions that push at her skin when she hears the word _survivor_. Survivor is a strong word, a word for strong people who have pushed past the things holding them back. Her first instinct is to reject the word and its connotations, but – but. She is still alive. Is that enough to label her a survivor?

“Lavender?” Mrs Reid asks gently.

“You think I’m a survivor?” Lavender asks, and her voice is spider-silk thin for reasons other than Parvati, and far more tentative than she had given it permission to be. Mrs Reid blinks at her, looking surprised, looking like the question is a ridiculous one, and it makes Lavender feel a little warm inside, that it was so obvious Mrs Reid hadn’t thought it needed explanation.

“Of course,” she says. “You came out of the Battle of Hogwarts. You’re still alive. You’re still fighting, yes, but you’re certainly a survivor.” She falls silent, then, like she knows Lavender needs time to process this, to turn the word over and over and over in her mind, to test the shape of it and see how it feels behind her forehead.

When she’s back in her white room, restrained again, Lavender opens her mouth and whispers, softly, “Survivor,” just to see how the word tastes when it curls over her tongue. It feels gentle, not as overbearingly strong as she was afraid it would be. “Survivor,” she says again – still softly, but more confident. It’s not what she is now, she thinks, restrained and crazy and in a white white white room. But maybe – it sounds like a word she could grow into, she hopes.

* * *

She liked music, as a child. (In Hogwarts, too, but she tends to lump her first six years of Hogwarts in with her childhood days, because she was so innocent then, so sheltered and safe and happy. Is that bad, that she associates happiness with her childhood days, long past?) Music was something that could anchor her, like patterns anchor her now. It hadn’t really mattered what the music was, as long as it had a beat she could sway to, as long as she could turn it up so loud that it drowned out the world.

(She’d learned to skate in a rink that played trashy music on loud overhead speakers. The cold bit at her face and her legs were always amazingly sore the next day, but the music grounded her in the moment so gloriously that she couldn’t even begin to think about the next day; she shifted her weight onto each leg with the rhythm of the music, and mouthed the words of the song as she glided around on the ice.)

Now, the music she listens to has a distinctly different cadence. She can barely hear anything in her white room, which means that any noise she makes seems to be amplified a thousand times over. When she breathes in, the air shakes in her throat, and when she exhales her breath hitches. She can hear the gentle noise of her throat bumping against itself. Her heart beats steadily, creating a rhythm underneath everything else. Her mouth can create a series of noises all by itself – the clacking of teeth, the soft noise of tongue-against-teeth, whistling, although she doesn’t like to whistle because it makes her thinks of birds, and magpies. 

Her body might be an orchestra, and she listens to it all day because there is nothing else to hear. The hitching of her throat, the beating of her heart, the scraping noise her tongue makes against her teeth – even the clicking of her joints when she moves too suddenly, or the more artificial noises of her fingers pattering against the nearest surface, the tapping noise created by her now-long fingernails. It all builds up to make a symphony. She doesn’t know what the song is saying, yet, but she listens carefully, because maybe all she has to do is pay attention and she’ll understand.


End file.
